Avoid Burnout with Your Horse: Have a Plan

Luckily, it was at this time that I began studying equine exercise physiology in earnest and learned the horses needed me to change my Groundhog Day approach anyway. To become better at dressage, my horses needed to become better athletes, not necessarily to do dressage every day. Funny enough, adapting my routine for this (with the convenient side-effect of preventing burnout for me) involved drafting what was in many ways a more rigid weekly schedule. This new plan has built-in variety and cross-training, variations in duration and intensity of training days, and prevents me from obsessing over the tedium of dressage on any given day. I probably don’t need to tell you it made both me and the horses happier.

Adhering to this plan has helped me make better equine athletes for sure. But more notably, it keeps me from burning out. It allows me to arrive at the barn each morning with a bright mood, a clear and focused mindset, and still after all these years a little eagerness. In a general outline, my weekly schedule is below. Obviously, there are times on any given day when I scrap the plan in favour of addressing a horse’s particular need that arises. More or less, though, our weeks follow a rhythm like this:

Monday: Basic gymnastic work, 30-45 minutes of riding in all three gaits, several transitions between gaits, lots of stretching. No fiddling with dressage movements.

Tuesday: Cavalletti day. A warm-up followed by 20 minutes schooling an exercise from my books.

Wednesday: Dressage schooling session

Thursday: Trail ride

Friday: Dressage schooling session

Saturday: Longing/bodywork/hack

Sunday: Off